I'm your host, Jester. I've been an EVE Online player for about six years. One of my four mains is Ripard Teg, pictured at left. Sadly, I've succumbed to "bittervet" disease, but I'm wandering the New Eden landscape (and from time to time, the MMO landscape) in search of a cure.You can follow along, if you want...

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Fit of the Week: the Curse sucks

[Curse, Sucks To Be You]
Damage Control II
Power Diagnostic System II
Power Diagnostic System II
Reactor Control Unit II

I love Recons. Recon Ships V was a no-brainer for two of my mains. I fly almost every Recon in the game, both cloaky and non-cloaky. They're such wonderfully versatile ships. Many of them have two or even three roles that they can be pressed into with one fitting. They're outstanding gate campers; a gate camp without at least two Recons of some sort supporting it is a fail gate camp, in my opinion. One Recon -- the Rapier -- can take on just about any role in the game depending on how you fit it, from cloaky scout to gate-camp support to pure DPS cruiser (OK, maybe this one's a stretch, but 300+ DPS isn't bad) to ninja salvaging. A Rapier will definitely be FOTW in some future installment... probably a couple of future installments.

This week, though, I thought it would be fun to feature an Amarr ship, since there's only been one Amarr FOTW so far. So here's an extremely evil Curse fit. This fit doesn't even require Recon V, though of course it will be much more effective with it.

Amarr ships are usually armor tankers, but the Curse is a natural shield tanker with its six mid slots. It's possibly the only Amarr ship that really rewards solid shield skills. This fitting has 11825 shield HP. That would be a lot for a Caldari cruiser, much less an Amarr one. ;-) Resistances are also quite good across the board, with only a small Thermal damage hole. That makes this Curse extremely resilient in a close-range fight. If you can live with a less sturdy tank or are somewhat short tackle, take off an Invul and fit a Warp Disruptor II.

DPS is provided by an extremely large drone bay, 150m3. Unfortunately, there isn't enough bandwidth to use heavy drones or sentries, but that leaves a lot of room for a variety of the light and medium drones of your choice. I tend to stick with Minmatar drones in the Curse because the Curse is a little slow and the speedy Minnie drones make up for this lack. ECM bots provide a second GTFO option, and a ship carrying armor rep bots is quite useful if you take this Curse on a long roam with a shield fleet. Even if you have shield logi along, the ability to rep armor in the field after a battle can be critical.

Of course, the main utility of a Curse is its ability to make life a living hell for just about any ship that comes into contact with it. By itself and with Recon V skill, this fit will neut out a full-on PL Hellcat using an overheated Heavy Cap Booster II in about a minute. Anything less than that is in serious trouble. Depending on the skills of the pilots involved, this Curse can eliminate between four and six of the eight Large armor reps coming off a pair of Guardians! As for Falcons, Blackbirds, and other jamming ships? If the jammer doesn't hit and successfully jam the Curse almost instantly, the jamming ship is done. And if your fleet is wanting to keep range from the enemy, inties and other tackle ships are the Curse's natural food source.

The only ships that don't fear Curses are Drakes and other passive shield tankers. Everything else hopes that the Curse attacks somebody else. Anybody else.

The primary disadvantages of this fit are two. First, it has tough fitting requirements: that Reactor Control Unit II is an annoying fit, requiring Energy Grid Upgrades V. You can get around this by replacing one of the Core Defence Field Extenders with an Ancillary Current Router and third PDS2 instead, but that really hurts your tank. Second, once you're sitting in this ship, you're really going to have to carefully manage your own cap. The best advice? Open your attack with the three Medium Neuts, then once you're confident a target is neuted down, keep one neut on that target while you move on to the next target with both NOSs plus a neut or two. If you can, alternate between heavier and lighter targets so that you can alternate between using all three Neuts on one target before using only one or two on the next one while you cap back up. Help your own cause by assisting your drones to a nearby ally so you can concentrate on neuting.

Finally, some pilots like Tracking Disruptors on Curses, but I'm not one of them. There's really only room in your mids for one non-tank mod, and if you're going to do that, that mod should really be a point. If you want to get into Tracking Disruptor tactics, the Pilgrim and its armor tank is the much, much superior ship to do it in, in my opinion.

My solo boat. Swap out the cap rigs with shield buffer depending on personal preference. I find that I spend a lot of time keeping range so the extra cap to keep my MWD cycling usually pays off. Tracking disruptor, eccm, web, and cloak are kept in the hold for easy swapping between fights.

The EM hole is definitely something to be concerned about. Basically any engagement against a drake pilot that is smart enough to swap missiles or an arty cane needs to be avoided at all costs.The NOS isn't always necessary, but it's nice to have when you are fighting multiple opponents. The goal of this fit is to harass and pick off targets without ever getting in close. To keep your MWD running while you're buzzing around you either need a cap booster or a lot of cap regen.

Nanos for speed and agility, the Curse is really fat. Point to... point stuff, come on this is mandatory. TDs to effectively take turret ships out of the fight. Neuts: self explanatory, Nos for cap stability in a longer fight where you should have other ships with juicy capacitors to suck on. Small neut is for swatting frigs that get too close or stuff that sneaks up on you, with it's halved cycle time of the medium cap mods. ECM drones to take another ship out of the fight, the DPS from the hammers etc is fairly meaningless in a gang.

Tank is fairly irrelevant, your tank is your range and your ewar. You can take at least 3 targets out of the fight completely with this fit- a cap hungry ship such as a laser boat, a turret ship such as a Hurricane, and finally one other ship with the ECM drones.

I`ve been fiddling about with some Curse fittings and I found it that it'd be a shame not to take advantage of the great resists the armor offers. Still, a little shield buffer, to keep the enemy interested until you neut half or more of his cap. Then fire up the repper and the TD and call in the cavalry. Opinions?

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